


The Ghost of You

by lavilsaWrites



Category: Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2
Genre: Angst, Attempt at Humor, Canon Character Death only nOT BECAUSE ARTHUR MORGAN DESERVED BETTER, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Micah can rot in hell, Romance, Semi-supernatural, Slow Build, Slow Burn, canon character development is my cup of tea yum, death is not the end, ghost!arthur, hints of suicidal thoughts, love is the most powerful magic of all fight me, perfect amount of heartache for characters and author
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-09-28 09:50:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17180675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavilsaWrites/pseuds/lavilsaWrites
Summary: John knew pain as well as he knew his own heart—not the pain of a wolf’s claws at your cheek and throat leaving eternal scars on an unkindly face, nor the pain of a gunshot wound bestowing copper stains on linen shirts and dirty skin, but pain, desperation, loss—the kind that tears apart the mind and soul until it fades like dust into the abyss, decorating the sky in its enigmatic constellations.He saw him, sometimes. A shadow in the distance, a shimmer of movement in his mind’s eye. But he could not—would not believe it. How could he? To believe would be to trust, and to trust would be to admit his undying desire to see him again, revealing all he so carefully buried long ago.What John didn’t know, however, was that Arthur still lived. Not in this world, perhaps, but in another far less fathomable one, watching from afar as John forged upon the lives and hopes that had been sacrificed for his and his family’s future.But could John, the man forever destined to delay the truth of his own heart, bring himself to believe again?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So… this is inspired by the fact that ghosts are canon in the RDR universe (that marsh ghost tho **shivers**), and what could be more tragic and beautiful than two star-crossed idiots falling in love despite it being too late? #RDR2RUINEDME #ArthurMorganDeservedBetter #JohnMarstonDeservedBetter #ScrewItTheEntireGangDeservedBetter #ExcludingYouMicah #YeahISeeYouYouPeaceOfFilth
> 
> **Happy Ending for the win!!

John knew pain as well as he knew his own heart—not the pain of a wolf’s claws at your cheek and throat leaving eternal scars on an unkindly face, nor the pain of a gunshot wound bestowing copper stains on linen shirts and dirty skin, but pain, desperation, _loss_ —the kind that tears apart the mind and soul until it fades like dust into the abyss, decorating the sky in its enigmatic constellations.

 _Go_ , he’d told him. A rugged hand on the shoulder, teetering him from his ability to stand. The gesture was as bold, strong, and unshakable as it had been since they’d both been nothing but children in a litter of smoke and ash. The lines on his partner’s hand told the story of a lifetime of crime and desolation, and the man’s touch wilted his bones, sharing an infinite sea of words forever consumed by the gap only death brings. But above all, John remembered his eyes, the way they bore into his own as if _seeing_ him for the first time. It was a look John fantasized knowing for himself, one always intended for others but never quite himself. The wall of brotherhood fell to reveal a garden of a hope only memories rightly capture, but what use was a memory when it serves only to hound the steps one takes until the end of days?

Because at that moment, he’d been alive, hadn’t he? Arthur stood before him, breathing and _real_ , but John had been too stupid and selfish to realize he’d been losing him for far longer than he had the decency to remember. Arthur became a walking shell of the man he was in the hands of the sickness, only… not. Because he changed too. Arthur—overbearing, calculating, beautiful Arthur—changed. Dutch claimed it time and again a fault of loyalty or the crippling of a mind to deprecating ideologies of a world caving in.

But John knew better. He _lived_ the better. And he owed it all to a man who deserved more than his broken family could have ever built him.

Perhaps it wasn't that Arthur became a shell, but rather that the shell of Arthur crumbled first to reveal the person he was meant to be instead.

And now, the world would never know the beauty the real Arthur would have wrought.

John embraced the tragedy of this truth, had it engraved on his heart and soul the moment sunrises and flowers and stones met his gaze. Like a spotlight grazing the waves of mountains in a lush ocean of landscapes and forests, the world’s beacon of hope rose and challenged John to a new day.

And Arthur… well, the symbol of everything he did in life shined in the horizon’s fading light and met the sun’s challenge for John, protecting him even across death’s borders and standing as proudly as its beholder did.

_Face me to the west so I can watch the setting sun and remember all the fine times we had that way._

Arthur’s words rushed in like a raging storm to the precipice of John’s mind. John wondered whether those times included him given the countless things done wrong in the name of solitude. But the statement lingered over John’s head the night it was spoken across warm faces and a kindling fire, regardless; it was a desire made to others unworthy of hearing it. But heavy and unrelenting, the knowledge of Arthur’s wish clutched John’s chest like a claw until death hunted for them both, a reminder of a _could be_ that ultimately ended in a _to be_. John tried long before then—truly, he had tried—to be better by this knowledge, but Arthur, being the man he was, assumed John didn’t care.

_Trust, brotherhood, family—you see it as something to be tolerated, Marston. I see it as a way of life._

In the end, it seemed they were both wrong, or perhaps they were both too late in realizing the absurdity of their own version of the truth. That trust, that brotherhood, that family had not been in the wide count of people surrounding them, but rather in the deep measure of love few could bring. John could only ever hope to know who those people were to the likes of a man now veiled and covered by six feet of soil.

“Oh, Arthur,” John whispered to the grave, fingertips drifting along wooden carvings Charles left behind few could understand. “We were idiots right until the end, weren’t we?”

He was met with no answer but the calm of the breeze instead.

With a huff, John sat before the grave and picked at the grass encircling him to pass the time. The singing birds hidden in the canopy above him were his only company, and the sun, now submerging into the mountainside, warmed John in a way that went no further than his skin.

John found himself coming to Arthur’s grave more often than not. But then again, by his own volition or even when he had nowhere to be in the days to come, John’s plans always came back to the one person who made his every breath possible. It became his secret source of masochistic comfort, visiting the grave of a friend who’d sacrificed everything for a faith that gave him nothing.

He thought of Abagail and Jack, too, waiting for him in a home built by his own hands. The structure was a promise of the future John intended to bring if his foolishness ever stopped for once in his goddamn life, that was.

No. One way or another, everything had to work. They had to learn what it was to live and preserve peace, to shape a future by their own hands, however long that peace may last for the likes of someone like him, because John lived for Arthur now. He lived for his name, his legacy, his everything. And John couldn’t fail Arthur again, not like he did long ago when he was even more of a fool, a time when running away was the only solution a child could excuse themselves with to avoid the inevitability of their own neglectful heart.

Idiots. Idiots until the end.

With a heavy sigh, John gave mercy to the poor grass and reached into his— _Arthur’s_ satchel for the first time that day. Deft fingers searched for the familiarity of leather and paper to pull out the journal left behind by its owner. When John had discovered the notebook for the first time, he’d been certain death by a broken heart would be more painful and torturous than that any bullet or knife could bring. Raw and vulnerable, Arthur’s thoughts and dreams sang across every charcoal-stained page like a song seeking recognition. The discovery left John feeling invasive to the privacy of a man who no longer even _lived_.

And yet.

Arthur’s words became John’s own aspiration for redemption. They filled him with hope and love whenever death’s lullaby seduced him or whenever the sun’s light became too bright against the backdrop of a crystal-clear blue sky. It was the promise of change and possibility in a world that knew nothing but fear and misery. But just as the journal proved to be the greatest source of a spirit long lost, so too was it John’s own secret to reap—even his own sweet Abigail didn’t know of the journal’s existence let alone who the satchel belonged to, if she ever even recognized it. The secret wasn’t chained by John’s own embarrassment, by any means, but rather by the desire to keep it his. Because John _was a_ selfish man, only with what he wished was… Well.

Twirling a stick of broken charcoal around his fingers and smearing his hand in the process, John filtered through the journal, glimpses of nature and creatures and curved letters bleeding into one. Memories of a time once beautiful reignited the part of John worn dull by the bandage time brings until, at last, Arthur’s entries came to their inevitable and untimely end:

_But I guess I lived as I saw fit and I ain't going to squeal about that now. Would be unseemly._

_I ain't afraid. Not now._

_Just hope for the best for them as I cared about._

_Oh, Mary..._

_I'll miss you until I see you again.  
_

Something deep within John, a forge burnt and hollow, burst with the scorching of a thousand flames. Coarse and unrelenting, the fire incinerated the foliage of lies to reveal what John foolishly would have done were it not for the devastation of an end brought to soon. And John being John, the fool being the fool, could never do right enough now by the only person he stole everything from.

And Mary…

Tragic that the world burned a man as good as Arthur in a crueler fashion than he believed himself to be.

The thought alone spurred an aching so deep in his chest John squeezed his eyes shut and reminded himself to breathe.

He momentarily wondered if Dutch, a father to them more callous than the people that hunted John down, ever _hurt_ this way whenever he thought of Arthur, if he ever even did. But then again, John wasn’t sure if Dutch deserved to know this ache, whether he had the right to mourn Arthur; wounds were made on something healed and nurtured and cared for, and Dutch did nothing to preserve Arthur and the spirit he carried.

For the first time since Arthur left this life unshaken, John fell victim to the breaking of his own heart.

Arthur gave everything to Dutch and the gang. And Dutch only watched as Arthur made himself bleed over and over again until the blood spilled over the cliff of his immortal hope.

Perhaps death was the greatest mercy of all.

 _Guess we’re just about done, my friend,_ John finally wrote to the ghost of the man that, despite it all, he’d pay any price and deed to see again.

_It’s been quite a journey._

_RIP, Arthur Morgan._

Something cold trickled down John’s cheek, and with a timid touch to it, John realized he was crying. Such a foreign feeling, the vulnerability and aching of a person so deep it rattled the gadget beating in his chest, surfacing everything he’d kept quiet and locked and buried for none to see.

But a momentary lapse in the foundation of walls built high was all it took to break the dam.

John pathetically clutched Arthur’s journal to his chest, weeping for everything and nothing, for what he’d won and what he’d lost. For shoulders so broad and perfect for any to rest upon, for hands as elegant as they were deadly, for a smile so bright the stars could grow envious. So many whispers and promises left unanswered, and just as John had been there to hear them, he’d also ignored what they’d been saying all along.

If this was love and brotherhood, John did not want it.

But he knew—oh, how he knew—that it was needed.

Arthur taught him that once. That no matter how many storms raged and bristled, no matter how much devastation a quake of the earth could bring, nature and all that came with it was never truly evil. So, too, was love never evil—only the people who exploit it.

_Maybe we ain’t the best kinds of folk there are, John, but it sure as hell don’t mean we can’t try to be better for the people who are._

That moment was all John needed to know what was true and necessary of his life’s purpose. John would paint the sky golden with all the memories he had yet to make in the name of all lost, basking in the light Arthur had given him. He would rip apart the universe itself to ensure his brother’s love and sacrifice had not been in vain.

For Arthur. He would do it all for Arthur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heh. This prologue ended up being a lot longer than I intended it to be. Can you tell I just finished this game and NEEDED TO POUR MY HEART OUT #ARTHURMORGANDESERVEDBETTER
> 
> This story will essentially be written pre-marriage to Abigail, post-time-leap. I've never been a big fan of the way John was paired up with Abigail in the end. It almost came across as a sense of duty to Jack than it did their love for one and other, especially given the drastic difference in their life values. Their bickering didn't come across as very healthy, either (like, yeah, fighting and disagreeing can be good for a relationship in reasonable terms, but when it comes to having fundamentally different perspectives on what you want out of life...a real conversation needs to be had). So this is the tone their relationship will take in the story, too. Not "in love," but they do love one and other—they are family, after all.
> 
> Please consider leaving a kudos or comment if you like the story so far!!
> 
> More to come soon ❤


	2. i

  

i

 

John saw him, sometimes.

A shadow in the distance, a shimmer of movement in his mind’s eye—he was but a dream lit by heavens that didn’t exist.

More often than not, it was quick and easy enough to pretend it never happened and ignore the quickening of his pulse as the vision blinded the corner of his eye. But the specter always faded before it fully formed leaving him with nothing but a false understanding of what his conscience screamed at him. Other times, John frankly wondered if he had lost his mind to the wolves the day Arthur rescued him from death itself.

John never looked at it—him, the ghost, whatever he dared call it by—directly, of course, afraid of what he would find if he did. He bore the shame for doing so like a scar across his breast as if he were neglecting something that could pass nigh a living being to the eyes his heart unwisely possessed. There was no precedence for it, no hint or tell or call to alert him of its happenstance. It was simply… there until it wasn’t, like wind to the earth or firelight to a home, not quite tangible but nevertheless _there_. It took John’s every dose of strength not to give in to the need to run to it only to confirm the stupid hope the decaying remnants of him had.

At first, John feared what he saw were hunters in the night, predators lurking among dark corners and shadowed bushes awaiting the lunge for the kill. John was in hiding, after all, as if Abigail didn’t remind him of that enough despite him having done everything in his power to bring normalcy to their lives since the day their world ended. But bounty hunters never brought him a sense of calm and comfort, nor did they glow and fade in the dark like a star that had lost its way to the sky.

John _knew_ it was him he saw. He knew it as much as he knew how to aim a gun and steal a life and breathe a cigar’s fumes into his lungs.

The worst of these happenstances, however, were those when John _heard_ him.

“John,” it murmured to him once nearly frightening him out of his own skin. He’d whipped around with the bottle of whiskey in his hand, trembling at how his muscles coiled at the recognition of his voice, as if every ounce of himself had held its breath for the final reveal that yes, _yes_ , he made it. Somehow, someway, Arthur came back from the dead like he always did.

Only… he didn’t, because John left him behind.

Like a cold slap across his face, he turned to see nothing and no one, only the floating dust of his home ignited by the sunlight shining through the window.

And John was left the fool.

He learned to ignore it from then onwards.

“John,” it would whisper, and he would keep raking maroon-painted leaves off his porch, the autumn breeze bristling through his long, matted hair. “John,” it would whisper, and he would keep brushing away at Rachel’s fur, her serenity and unchanging behavior reminding him of where he was in the here and now. “John,” it would whisper, and he would take another swing at the log, the rhythmic echo of the _thud! thud! thud!_ silencing the sweet, rich voice that belonged to this world no longer.

There were times the voice said different things, phrases and thoughts John cursed his mind for coming up with, namely the  _I’m sorry’s_ that never tired in being spoken so effortlessly _._ John could never bring himself to say anything in turn—doing so would deepen a wound he’d long pursued stitching together and leave him a bleeding corpse of his own wretched self.

It was the case now as John tried desperately not to give in to the instinct of turning toward its whispers, in placing faith in the person he’d killed and laughed and mourned alongside with despite the odds a lifetime ago. John hacked away at the trunk of the tree just outside the fence of his home, hands raw and back aching. The summer’s overbearing heat did nothing to quell the need to lie down with a cool beer in hand for an hour or two (or, frankly, a day or more, but God only knew how much John would get his ass handed to him by anyone who saw him behaving like Uncle did every moment of his life).

In the distance hummed the sound of rustling leaves and dripping water as Abigail tended to the beginnings of a garden planted near the entrance of their home. The aroma of the flowers and fruits clung to the air like a sweet fragrance far too elegant for the likes of the invisible stains they built their hold upon. It was fitting, John supposed, that people on the run who had stolen the livelihood of others would be forever tainted by the blood spilled in their name, like a flood that surpassed shores left unguarded.

“Marston,” the voice spoke the first time that day, dangerously closer and clearer than it ever had been.

John clenched his jaw and gripped the handle of his axe even tighter.

There, to his right, he could see him—it—again. Eerie and ethereal and unpredictable, the faded shape didn’t quite belong amidst the sun-baked ground and immaculate-cut leaves of the landscape. Whereas John grew accustomed to a palette of earth and soil, the ghost preferred vibrant shades of blue and purples, the same colors Arthur favored with a matter of his dressing. John admitted it was a spectacular imitation of the man on his mind’s part, and suddenly, John regretted having ever paid close enough attention to Arthur in his life to have created a rather impeccable copy in his death.

The worst of days, however, were those when John forgot Arthur’s face. And not the one captured beside his lover by a camera during Arthur’s youth, nor that of an artist who took no care in depicting their own features in a journal of their own—John had easy enough access to recall what his brother’s features looked like but not how they _moved_.

John missed the glimpses of Arthur’s face revealed only by the tangibility of existence and the beat of nature untamed beneath its gestures. He missed his eyes and the way they absorbed lands through the lens of an artist, finding beauty in anything and everything John couldn’t see. He missed his posture and the way it demanded the attention of even the greatest of men no matter how much Dutch dampened it to reclaim a light that wasn’t his to take. But most of all, John missed his smiles, the ones Arthur made when he thought others weren’t looking, or when he didn’t seem to realize himself that there was no need to look further for the brightness of a thousand suns than within the simple curvature of his lips.

 _Thud!_ the axe went, sparks of splinters flying in each direction. John chastised himself for getting swept away by what couldn’t be yet again. _It’s only a matter of time until it leaves. You know this._

“Never did care for listening, now, did he?” the presence mused. John took a deep breath and leaned back for another swing. Goddamn Arthur and his stupid, teasing ways. How he hated it when he was a mere child trying to grow in rotten soil, but how he’d give anything to hear it again—to truly hear it and not some false conjuring of his heart that stopped working properly long ago. The aching need to just _look at it_ and feed a hunger left for dead crawled its way under John’s skin like a poison that never finished the kill. One look was all it would take to confirm it wasn’t him, to establish the past’s unmendable disposition, to breathe the future Arthur crafted for him the day it pledged his death—

 _Thud!_ the axe went again. _Leave it be, idiot. You know better than to look._

But the presence called John’s name again too—a challenge to his lack of a reply.

 _Thud!_ the axe went, another beat to a song of ignorance. The impact vibrated through the handle and ricocheted off his bones. The need to quell the tug in his breast smothered him, and all he could do was smash and break it like the only thing Dutch ever taught him to do. _Thud! Thud! Thud!_

“John!” another voice called out bringing his swings to an immediate halt.

This voice he knew to be real.

With a shaky breath and a harsh wipe to his brow, John turned to see Abigail standing not ten feet away from him, hands on her hips and daggers in her eyes. “What’s gotten into you? I called you nearly a dozen times. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you weren’t even—”

Abigail’s gaze fell to something just below John’s stare.

“What happened?” she sighed as she stepped toward him. She wrapped her hands around his and pried open his trembling grip on the weapon in his hands. Only then did John note the wine-red stain on his palms smeared upon the hilt of the axe she now held. Her hands seemed too small and delicate to grip something so deadly and sharp before she bent over to lean it against the trunk. Gingerly, she took his hands in her own again and studied the cuts and bruises forming there, the shape of the axe’s handle indented in and bleeding over his skin.

“Bein’ the fool as ever, that’s what,” the ghost of Arthur mumbled, and John fought the urgency like a tapped, boiling kettle to snap back.

“John, I know you’ve a fondness for butchering yourself time and again, but I can’t keep finding you like this,” Abigail teased with a _tssk_. “You’ll be dead before we even begin living a life here—a life _you_ built, need I remind you—and what use would there be in that?” John admired the focus she so readily exuded as she further observed their intertwined fingers. It was easy to forget sometimes how determined she could be when something caught her eye. It was only symbolic of her focus for someone like him, he mused. “Come on, I’ll help you get patched—”

“It ain’t nothing, Abigail,” John assured her as he claimed his hands for his own again. She frowned when he did, the lines of her brow deepening as her eyes followed the gesture. He missed the warmth of her fingers around his immediately, but not the warmth he knew she sought from him in return. “I got carried away, is all. Ain’t any different than all those times on the job.”

“And I’m grateful for it. But this ain’t the way to go about it. You ain’t alone in this anymore as you’re so eager to prove.”

Already did he seek escape from the direction of their words. John glanced at his feet and coiled inwards, awaiting the alternate but preferable verbal lashing he’d personally developed a sixth sense for when it came to Abigail. “Sadie came in about a job she was looking into yesterday,” he told her as he kicked the ground, dirtying the toe-end of his boots.

“John.” A murmur, a warning. He was unfazed to see the alarm pooling in her eyes when he looked up. “Please tell me you didn’t answer the way I think you did.”

“It’s decent pay, Abigail. It’s what I’m good at. Not… _this_.” He gestured to the fields of farming before them, half-withering and half-dying. He could hardly be surprised at the ranch’s poor state—the animals they cared for themselves seemed to fare better than they had in the years since this new life began. “We’re kidding ourselves into believing I am otherwise.”

“You  _promised_.”

“I promised a home, a life. And I’ve done everything I can to fulfill that. You _know_ that.” She scoffed and shook her head, biting her lip as she surveyed the landscape of their home along with him. “But this ain’t like robbin’ a train or killin’ for Dutch.”

“Like hell, it ain’t, John! From where I’m standin’, you’re doing the same exact things for different people. Scoutin’, shootin’, killin’—”

“For the _law_ , Abigail. Not some roach who might as well’ve left us for dead.”

“How long do you plan on pulling that excuse? I ain’t dumb, I _know_ it’s the law.” Abigail stepped in close, the rage of a forest fire in her glare. “But what am I to tell our son the day of tomorrow when I hear some man hell-bent on gettin’ away from jail ends up shootin’ you dead? Did you ever think to consider what that would mean for Jack? For me? This ain’t about you anymore, John. It’s about _us_!”

“I _am_ doin’ it for us!”

“Then stop tryin’ to get yourself killed when I so much as turn around from you!”

The world came to a standstill, both huffing and puffing as they waited for the other to make their move.

John was the first to crack when he turned away, fisting his hands to quell the sting in his palms. There was never an end to his damn argument, any conclusion to this rudimentary cycle built and implored just for them. Somehow, he couldn’t tell if they were fools for gripping on their beliefs tighter than they did each other or even bigger fools for trying to convince the other they didn’t, regardless.

“I ain’t askin’ for much, John,” Abigail whispered after a time.

John hardly tempered the heat and shame those words incinerated him with. “I built you a home, Abigail. I’m doin’ the best I can.”

“Maybe that’s the problem, then.”

John couldn’t bear to look and see what the expression waiting on Abigail’s face would be at that. He’d already seen enough disappointment aimed his way in his lifetime to recognize it by sound alone. Years ago, he would have imploded at the statement, kicked and screamed like a child throwing a tantrum at the accusation, but the dulling of time and all that transpired since then could never quite reignite the fury to avenge the injuries at all.

“Don’t leave it like that,” the specter said. John almost forgot it still lingered there in his mind, gracing the edges of his being with such sweet and forgiving grace. But then again, it never did quite leave, did it?

“Don’t matter,” Abigail said just as John heard the stomp of a horse’s hooves traversing closeby. “She’s comin’ up the ranch now, anyway. And I ain’t gonna be here to hear it, either. If you wanna go ahead and kill yourself for the sake of pride, be my guest, John.”

The sound of her receding footsteps was the only proof of Abigail’s departure.

“Marston, you goddamn idiot.” John despised the specter’s scolding tone and the softness that still somehow coated its words simultaneously. It felt too real and plausible and Arthur _-_ like to what a breathing version of him would say, full of contradictions that only made sense when Arthur created them. The agitation of it all irked at John’s fingertips, and with the grace of a toad, he searched his pockets for the only relief he could yet find in a day as miserable as this one was turning out to be. Pulling at the pack of cigarettes and a lighter, he fumbled to open the cap, and when met with the mercy of smoke in his lungs, he ran a hand through his unkempt hair, incidentally smearing it with his blood while loosening the tension knotted within.

“I take it she still hasn’t changed her mind,” Sadie greeted him when she neared enough. She leaped down from her horse and hitched it to the fence before standing beside his leaning form. Hands on either holster and stance balanced equally on either leg, she was the epitome of gunslinger grace. What a wicked shame to those who could ever believe otherwise. Then again, anyone who dared consider her incapable of the things she did had it coming to them one way or another; a fitting punishment, John considered.

“Don’t think she ever will,” he retorted with another exhale of the cigarette’s fumes, following the trail of the smoke as it rose to meld into the infinite sea of clouds, forever gone.

“John, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if all this huntin’ is gonna do nothin’ but make things between you two worse—”

“It’s my decision to make, Sadie.”

She tilted her head at that, studying him for a while. It didn’t go by unnoticed the way her eyes traced the bloodstains in his hands nor what must have been his pinched, sore eyes (John could scarcely remember the last time his nights had been shorter than his days themselves). It unnerved him how easy it must be for Sadie to read him for what he was with his hunched posture and excess of stupor, regardless of the more obvious state of his being. “Alright then,” she said with a nod.

“What’s the latest you’ve heard about that job, anyway?” he asked, desperate for a change in subject while leading them over to the wooden table at their porch. No longer was Abigail anywhere to be found, but with the sun burning at his and Sadie’s backs, he was grateful at the sight of canteen mugs and a bottle of rum placed there, no doubt by Uncle at some point.

John also didn’t miss how his mind toyed with having Arthur’s ghost follow them in tow, pretending a man long dead also had a part to play in any of this.

“It’s up north,” Sadie told John as she sat down on one of the creaking chairs and locked her hands together on the table—ready for business as always. “Fella’s apparently been assassinating several folks in charge ‘round New Hanover. You in?”

“‘Course. When do we leave?” He sat down himself and poured a glass of the drink for both of them, noting the way the specter leaned against the railing as it listened.

“Not so hasty, now. I’m still workin’ on diggin’ up the trail of the man. He’s a bit of a ghost, the way he moves ‘round the place. Hidden in plain sight, so they say.” John nearly morbidly laughed at that. Sadie took a sip of the drink John slid her way regardless before continuing, “Chances are, he’s a prick who got caught one too many times doin’ something wrong, and the last thing I wanna do is scare him off by busting down every door to find him. Goes by the name Toothslayer, ‘pparently.”

John snorted, nearly coughing on the fumes he was about to inhale again. “Toothslayer? Seriously? Bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Say that to the people he’s killed. Ain’t very pretty.” John shuddered at that, and a wicked grin flashed across Sadie’s face. “Well, would you look at that! Somethin’ that finally makes John Marston squirm.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I ain’t done no such thing yet,” he retorted, trying and failing miserably to control the tugging on his lips. Leave it to Sadie Adler to bring a smile out of him these days.

But a movement from the ghost off to his right sobered John right up. It seemed content the way it leaned up against the railing of the porch as naturally as it did, as if it _belonged_ there in its perfectly unkempt clothing, all forearms and bare-chested and sun-kissed hair to soak in the sky's light. Unmatched was the ghost to any delicacy created as it basked there in its own realm of memory and starlight.

It was but a painting brought to life, and John fought the urge to caress its brush-strokes and marvel at the masterpiece of its craft with his hands.

“So you’re hunting assassins now. Moving up in the world, ain’t you, Miss Adler?” the ghost said, and it took everything in John not to give in to the satisfaction of pretending it—he—was real and beam at the comment in her place.

Sadie spoke, tugging John from the thought he was musing longer than necessary. “I’ll be at Valentine tomorrow, if you’ve the itch to join me then.” And for a moment, John could do nothing but drink in the sight of it—Sadie, breathing and real and giving John the anchor needed to survive in this ocean he kept drowning in, and the ghost behind her, a figment of his imagination seducing him to drift deep below a wave he’d die for.

“Sounds like a plan,” was all John managed to muster.

There was a beat of silence where the breeze kicked in, giving John a moment much needed to regain control of his composure. Unnerving how often it happened wherever the ghost was concerned. Even the alluring fumes of the cigarette drifting from between his fingertips lost the attention he’d initially sought for now.

“Business aside, how’re you doin’?” Sadie asked him, her voice taking on that tone he was coming to identify too often these days. To anyone else, her voice would have sounded as it always did, raspy and wild, her demeanor a restless storm you knew could be unleashed at every beck and call. But John learned when their paths met what to look out for to understand the person she’d become in the hands of a deck dealt unjustly.

John ran a finger around the edge of his glass, his cigarette held amidst his fingers in the other, and pondered at all the things he should and shouldn’t say.

In the age of the ghost’s first happenstance, he’d been torn in his wanton desire to uncage the demons trapped to his center. With the lunacy of someone who wished for the impossible, he nearly revoked his sanity and admitted the invisible he saw to Abigail, a notion driven by a hopeless plea to a paradise that gave up on John and his kind ages ago. But John never did quite learn how not to run from the first inkling of danger when it came to matters of the heart. If idiocy were an election, he might as well be the starring candidate.

“Come on, out with it.”

John met Sadie’s eyes, those that bore into his own with a softness so untethered it rattled his being.

“I just… miss it sometimes, I guess,” he told her. Not a lie, but also not the truth.

“What do you mean?”

He loosened a breath and brought the glass to his lap so as to lean back properly on his seat. What mighty thin ice to dance upon. “Bein’ with Dutch. The gang. Strange thing to say considering how everythin’ ended, I know. Wasn’t the best life—definitely not a good one, either—but it felt like we at least had a purpose to it all, somethin’ to fight for.”

“Ain’t your family worth fightin’ for?”

“Of course it is. It’s just…” John huffed with the indignation of something he couldn't quite thumb down. He was never good at this—at words and poetry and putting meaning to things. It was the reason Dutch and Hosea paired him and Arthur so often, he supposed. A wild animal angry at the world who’d spring his neck at the first chance of trouble and a man unshackled who somehow held it back at the stroke of a hand made the proper match for a sport that killed. It became difficult for John to look Sadie in the eye when the thought struck. “I don’t know. Don’t feel as much like we’re fightin’ for something rather than just existin’.”

Sadie looked at him oddly for a moment, and John wondered at the sea of memories and wisdom that lay behind those steel-iron eyes, the kind John had seen reserved for only the few like Hosea and Arthur. They were abated by a force that taught nothing but the crippling of survival, and once caught in their net of insight, it was impossible to forget the depths they held. Never failed to make John feel more like a child, that did.

“Funny. I used to say the same thing when my Jakey died,” Sadie said, and John flinched for a reason far beyond his comprehension. “Look, I ain’t gonna lie, John. It’s a tough deal findin’ faith when there ain’t much to begin with. You can’t force somethin’ that simply ain’t meant to be. I tried bein’ the good little western maiden for a while after I joined the gang, but I knew it just wasn’t goin’ to work. Weren’t the same, losin’ my husband.” Her gaze followed the fields of the ranch, caught on something in the distance John couldn’t see. “Death does that to people. Makes even the most grounded of things move. And so, I picked up the first thing I knew would help bring peace with that.”

“Lucky for you, it ended up bein’ by picking up a gun. You ain’t really helpin’ my case here, Sadie.”

She fixed him with a pinning stare. “My point is, _John_ , you need to give yourself _time_. A rose don’t sprout in the neck of a day. How else do you expect to learn what livin’ here could be like?”

Realization settled in. Poetry again. No, he wasn’t skilled at that indeed. “Never been good with change, I guess.”

“You’re telling me,” the ghost quipped.

John gripped his glass of rum a little tighter but nearly dropped it when he looked at Sadie again, all calm understanding and unforgiving perception as if seeing his festering anger where he couldn’t. “What’s that look for?” he asked her.

She shifted in her seat, knowing in every sense of the word and not unlike a hungry cougar that had just crossed paths with its prey. “What’s this really about, John?”

“Pardon me?”

“You look like a wet pup with its tail stuck between its legs. And before you think about giving me another lecture about bounty huntin’ and shootin’ and the guilt of losin’ family and all that, let me remind you I’m the one with the gun here,” she pat said weapon at her hip with a teasing grin. “No funny business, just talk. So, what’s this really about?”

The ghost, too, seemed keen on hearing an answer as it stilled, and dear _God_ did John want to look.

But he huffed instead, abandoning the cigarette he couldn’t finish by dropping it into his rum and leaving it aside. Somehow, he’d lost his appetite for doing anything of the kind. It wasn’t himself to act more like a phantom of the person he was than the one he saw, and he couldn’t tell if that was better or worse.

Maybe he really was losing his mind.

“Sometimes…” John fought the urge to kick himself at how stupid he sounded. He had a decent family and cleared ledger others dug themselves into the ground for, yet he for the life of him couldn’t seem to reclaim the tools that made those sacrifices work. Sadie talked about growing roses, but he couldn’t help feel he was the thorn of one. “Sometimes, I wonder if I’m goin’ about this all wrong. Pretendin’ to be someone I ain’t ever gonna be cut out to be. But I know I have to try because…”

And there it was, the step before the fall and the gaping darkness that loomed before it. Why he stupidly couldn’t chance the leap himself was beyond his hopes to understand.

“Because of Arthur.”

Sadie’s words cut straight through John’s core, shattering a fragility he’d been careful to pile and lock and bury away. And John didn’t know how to put any of it back together again, to put _himself_ back together again. He could only shrink further in his seat and pray himself capable of abating the incoming storm of this reality.

“John…” the ghost breathed. Soft and unabashed and full of the life it didn’t have, it lingered there on the edge of John’s great ruin. Worse, however, was the way it stepped closer to him as if reaching for him across a galaxy of constellations John had yet to discover.

John always did have good practice of neglecting the need to shut up. “He gave everything to us. Ended up dyin’ just so we could make a start without him.” _And I left him behind._ But somehow, those words didn’t grasp at his lips, not yet, and perhaps they never would. John felt a burning at his throat that made it even harder to speak, drunk on an ocean of meanings that no longer mattered. “I don’t know how I can ever amount to that.”

“Who said you needed to?” Sadie’s question struck a chord in John and he frowned at her, caught unaware at her sudden blatant discontent of his efforts. She rolled her eyes at that with a snort. “Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t mean it that way. What I’m tryin’ to say, you buffoon, is what gave you the idea you need to be like he was? Ain’t John Marston enough?”

 _No_ , the child in John wanted to say. _No, it’s not enough. He gave me everything, and I gave him death._

“Just wish I could do right by him, for once,” he whispered.

The world came to a standstill, hushed by the resignation of a truth weakened by the effort of wielding it. It was a foolish thought, a worthless plea that stopped mattering a lifetime ago, yet John _couldn’t_ let go, he _couldn’t_ do better, he _couldn’t_ be the person Arthur and Abigail and Jack wanted and needed him to be. They were entities raised in a nest of hunted monsters, and even then, John couldn’t get being the monster right. He’d been stuck and dug and sown to the clashing of two identities since the moment Dutch and Hosea found him. Yet Arthur, somehow and someway in days, had found a balance to it all John couldn’t seem to figure out after years. Like a leaf hanging by the stem of blowing wind, John lacked the courage to succumb to the abyss.

Arthur’s dying wish had been the gift of life, and John’s living wish was to give it back to the only man who knew how to use it.

A hand brushing over his own tore John out of the nightmare of his thoughts, and he looked up to see freckles and blue eyes and blonde hair smiling in turn to the repressed sobs clinging to his chest. What a cruel and unfair thought it was to yearn those qualities belonged to a dead man than the living woman before him.

“Oh, John. You already have,” was all she said.

John broke down in tears long after she left.

 

* * *

 

John didn’t move out of his seat the rest of the day, and neither did the ghost when it sat beside him.

Serenity was scarce, these days, and John supposed it natural he desist being quick about poking it only to shred it for its fleeting nature. Between the firecrackers of his thoughts, the hailing of bullets amidst jobs and the stains they always left, and the reminders of an unforgivable action long past, John had learned peace was a virtue to fasten onto for as long as he was able, regardless of the circumstances they came by.

Peace had once come when shot near dead alongside Sadie. It was a stupid move on his part—the man who’d fired the bullet flanked them like a wolf in the shadows when they’d been too focused on their target’s nigh escape. One moment, John had stood upright, blood pumping in his veins and his heart beating to a song of the past in his ears, and the next, he’d forgotten what it was to have a body of his own, focusing only on the shape of the clouds rimmed by the sun miles above him. The drums of gunfire echoed in the chamber of his mind, but they were distant and mute enough to make him believe he was meant to lay there, frolicking at existences that could have been.

The relentless burning in his shoulder ruptured the peace when saved by a doctor in a town hours away. Sadie, a hero beyond imagining, had pulled him back from the edge of death, and whether she understood the reason why he’d ceased speaking for days, she made no comment of it.

There was also the peace that came through a time only Jack could nurture and create, his wide-eyed wonder and curiosity for a story that had nearly scarred him a reminder that all wasn’t lost forever.

But no, this was a different kind of peace, John considered as he leaned back in his seat on the porch, balancing his weight on its back legs just enough to bring the thrill of the fall behind it. This was the peace the void of shed tears and disassociated revelations brings. Eyes turned skyward, he hummed to the timeless melody of creation, pondering at the frailty of his home and the town and the country beyond it. The lightness of his mind and the trace of rum on his tongue no doubt played a role in the loosening of his thoughts that night.

Peppered was the sky in gleaming galaxies, twinkling in the eternal canvas revered by generations of men slaved to life’s creation.

John briefly wondered if Arthur and Hosea and Lenny—everyone who’d bled into the dirt of this earth—lived somehow, in some way, among any of those worlds above instead now, watching from afar and embracing those left alive who could only cherish the meaning and absoluteness of their memory. Or perhaps they’d been reborn again in a life far better than the one they’d adhered to. He wanted to believe this the case, that they were out there somewhere basking in a peace they hadn’t known for an eternity. But then again, the likelihood of it being nothing but a silly fantasy fueled by the need to believe there was something beyond the misery of a slow, decaying death was damn near irrefutable.

It was only fitting the ghost would precisely choose that moment to speak.

“You shouldn’t want to be like me, Marston.”

John ignored its voice, unfazed yet again at the consistent reminder of his illusions. He praised his mind for having been able to summon Arthur’s false presence for the longest time yet, but unmoved still was his gaze to the universe above them.

“You should be learnin’ from my mistakes, not reverin’ them, damn it.”

John drummed his fingers on the arms of his wooden chair, the creaking of his weight on its back legs the only sound lingering between what was real and what wasn’t.

“Abigail loves you. Jack loves you. Sadie, Charles… hell, even Uncle, in his way. You have more than me bein’ there ever would give. And you just…” The ghost sighed, and from the corner of John’s eye, he saw the way it ran a hand through its illuminated hair, head hanging low as it peered at its feet instead. John could have laughed in bitterness at the irony—a shimmering star looking downward and a commoner dirtied by soil looking up. “Pretendin’ it away like I did won’t solve nothin’. And they need you, John. More than you need…”

John stilled at that, the pricking of needles at his skin drawing his breath short. He couldn’t tell who the ghost spoke to more—John or itself—but he didn’t need the cursed reprimand it alluded to, not now. This was his _mind_ talking this way, he warned himself, and how he despised it at that moment for saying the things it was. Words had been spoken by the ghost before, of course—names and phrases and beliefs easily excused for what they were—but the invoking of whatever this was John couldn’t and didn’t want to understand.

“I ain’t anythin’ more than a man who died,” the ghost continued, ignoring the unspoken plea for mercy, and John clenched his jaw to prevent the growl in his throat from escaping his lips. “So stop actin’ like I didn’t choose what I did. Stop throwin’ this all away for somethin’ that ain’t ever meant to be before it’s too late.”

Still, John didn’t move, yet he clasped the arms of the chair so viciously he feared they would snap from the restraint draining through his grip. He knew, he _knew_ it spoke of Arthur’s life and its misgivings, but curse his heart and head for being driven mad by a hope surpassing the horizon of its words. Curse his heart and head for being driven mad in the first place by a fallacy that shouldn’t exist.

“God only knows why I’m even tryin’ this. Pretendin’ this ain’t just the form of hell I’ve been assigned to. But you shouldn’t be livin’ another of its kind while _alive_.”

The last word hung in the thickness of the air like a hot poison John feared inhaling. All matter of breath had escaped his lungs, and the entwining of his limbs threatened to tear his body in two. Perhaps it was the lingering warmth of the alcohol in his veins, but his wavering in judgment hung by a shakable balance as much as his chair did.

The ghost of the past, however, seemed keen on severing every shred of strength John had warred years against to piece together.

“Let go, Marston. Just… let me go. If not for your sake, then—”

The direction of its words cracked any and all restraint left. The world came to a halt at the contraption of anger snapping into place, and John’s vision _ripped_ to black.

“Goddamnit, just _shut the hell up_ already!” John leaped from his seat, the sound of it clattering against the fixture of the house's walls behind him a thunderclap to his ears, and he twisted around so as to stand directly in front of the ghost he’d conjured years of discipline to avoid looking at. Gone was the pretense of his mind’s unforgivable demeanor. Gone was the pretense of a bandage placed over a wound carved to Arthur. Gone was the pretense of everything John fought tooth and nail to ignore in the name of sanity.

And for the first time in years, John surrendered and gazed at the ghost of a moonlit face—glowing and vibrant and breathtaking in all it used to be, but by the _heavens_ did it feel like a remedy to so much more.

The vitality of the illusion combined with the artistry of torture at the sight shattered the bravery it took for John to recognize hallucination for what it wasn't. But still did John admire everything denied to him, stunned by the brilliance of Arthur’s form. The ghost’s chest rose and fell like the sun did to the day, its eyes blinked in life like the universe shining above them, and its lips clamored for words like John’s very own did. It was damn near _identical_ to the memory of him, and John reached for this faith with hands that dared not move from his sides.

What John didn’t expect—were he to have expected anything at all—was for the ghost to linger as long as it did. It didn’t move, it didn’t fade, it didn’t continue what should have been its venture to the sky. Rooted to its seat in space and time and all in between, the ghost’s stare darted between John’s own two eyes in a question none knew to answer.

Neither John nor the ghost spoke for what seemed an eternity, and the reckless part of John didn’t want to. He wanted to pretend this was real, this fury and resignation for cruel words spoken yet the love that flooded like a soothing cure at its self-deprecation. He wanted to pretend he was real, he who’d sundered the essence of the man John had ever been and ever would be. He wanted to pretend all the tears he’d shed for the person who shaped his world had been in vain. John just _wanted_.

“John…?”

Cracked was the ghost's voice in its delivery, so hesitant and broken in the innocence of its inquiry it neigh brought John to his knees. The name lingered there like a choice to make, a faith to aspire to—

But John turned away instead, his heart pounding against his ribcage with a staggering beat he regretted donning in his decision. Giving his mind the satisfaction of pretending had fragmented his every shaking breath, leaving him a panting and sweaty mess to his ill decisions. He trembled as he fumbled over to the porch’s railing, grasping at the chiseled wood to anchor himself back down from wherever the phantom had taken him. Where once the alcohol had been a sweet taste on his tongue in a moment of spiteful peace, now it ignited the need to lurch the chaos he’d created inside.

He’d _known_ the consequences. He’d known yet had been stupid enough to be enticed by the only person capable of doing so.

John clutched the collar of his shirt, curling into himself like a man left to starve, and the sobs that escaped him ripped through the fences he’d built against Arthur’s memory long ago.

But when he finally had the courage to look back, the ghost was already gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter can be essentially boiled down to: John tries very hard to be a good boah, and Arthur facepalms again and again. 
> 
> (1) It pains me to this day hearing John tell Mary-Beth, "I don't talk about Arthur much these days, but I still think about him sometimes." Like... all of RDR2 just completely shifted my interpretation of John as a character. He was already rich and complex enough by the terms set in RDR, but being gifted the context of all he'd gone through to live a peaceful life on the ranch? Wondering to himself what could have become of Arthur had John stayed behind to help him, or had Arthur not gotten TB? So much to unpack in like 5 minutes of screen time for that last bit before Arthur's death. Literally a game-changer. What a tragic masterpiece.
> 
> (2) Writing this from a point of view of a John who's not aware that he's in love but knows his affection for Arthur surpassed beyond the definition of brotherhood (and blames it on admiring him in the end, tbh). Arthur, however, isn't aware he's potentially in love at all. Doesn't see why anyone could be with him anyways. GOD MY HEART. 
> 
> (3) Cheers to wise!Sadie. This woman is everything I aspire to be lol. Such a ruthless, loving, unbelievably courageous and strong woman. 
> 
> Please consider leaving a kudos or comment if you like the story so far!! Critiques and/or any other feedback are also very much appreciated :) 
> 
> More to come soon ❤
> 
> EDIT 6/28: This story is NOT abandoned. Tons of personal conflicts have simply been in the way. Next chapter available soon!


End file.
